Europe: A History (51 page)
This period of transition lasted for half a millennium. In the fourth and fifth centuries, the Empire’s links with the Western provinces were weakened to the point where imperial rule in the West was abandoned. The last remnants of ancient paganism were suppressed. In the sixth century there was a concerted attempt under Justinian (r. 527–65) to restore the Western connection, but it ended in failure. Then, with the influx of Bulgars and Slavs, the remnants of the Empire’s Latin-speaking population were overwhelmed. Byzantium was left entirely Greek. In the seventh century, the valuable Eastern provinces were overrun by the Arabs; and the territorial base of the Empire shrank to something remarkably akin to that of the ancient Greek world prior to Alexander’s conquests (see Map 5). In the eighth century, when the Arab tide was ebbing, the Empire was shaken by an amazingly protracted religious furore over icons, which was one of the sources of the schism between Eastern and Western Christianity. Protracted wars with the fearsome Bulgars were not damped down before a Bulgar khan had quaffed his wine from an emperor’s skull. The Iconoclast controversy came to an end in 842–3. Relations with Bulgars reached an important turning-point in 865, when their warleader was baptized by the Patriarch of Constantinople. Five hundred years of turmoil were moving to a close. At that date, the Roman Empire stood within two years of the founding of the great Macedonian dynasty, whose emperors were to bring it to a new apogee. Over the previous five centuries, the long procession of external and internal crises had changed the political, social, religious, and cultural life of the Empire out of all recognition. By then, if not before, Byzantium had truly succeeded the Roman world in every sense.
The fifth-century collapse of the Empire’s Western provinces came as the result
of long decay. It is doubtful whether the barbarian invasions did more than catalyse a process which was already well advanced. Some, like Gibbon, have stressed the decadent luxury of the ruling class. Others have stressed socio-economic factors—monetary and price inflation, over-taxation, bureaucracy, agricultural decline, which in turn produced what Ferdinand Lot called ‘a regime of castes’. Ossification of the social strata was accompanied by ‘a total transformation of human psychology’.
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Here above all was the classic case of imperial ‘overstretch’: the Empire could not sustain the military effort indefinitely. The imperial armies were so saturated by barbarian soldiers and ex-barbarian generals that the old distinction between Roman and non-Roman became increasingly irrelevant.
Yet the moment of truth was slow in coming. In the fourth century, Constantine’s successors were at least as alarmed by the Persians as by the western barbarians. Julian (r. 361–3), having spent many years in Gaul restoring the Rhine garrisons, was slain in Mesopotamia. Valentinian I (r. 364–75) again divided the Empire in order to continue Julian’s work in Gaul. Theodosius I (r. 378–96), son of a general, managed the crisis caused by the Ostrogothic invasion (see p. 229), and was the last to restore imperial unity. After his death, the division between East and West was made permanent, and the Western provinces were allowed to drift away. Of Honorius (r. 395–423), who ruled in Milan, at first under the regency of Stilicho the Vandal, it was said that he knew nothing of ‘Roma’ beyond the fact that it was the name of his pet chicken.
The last act of the Empire in the West, in 476, is instructive. A boy-emperor with the symbolic name of Romulus Augustulus was the latest puppet to be elevated to the imperial dignity by the squabbling army factions. But a delegation of the Roman senate, which travelled to Constantinople to obtain the usual agreement from the Eastern Emperor, did not ask for Romulus Augustulus to be confirmed. Instead, they begged the Emperor Zeno (474–91) to accept the over-lordship of the West for himself, whilst granting the title of Patrician to Odoacer, the barbarian general who actually controlled Italy at the time. In this way the principle of imperial rule was upheld in theory, though all practical government was surrendered. For centuries after 476, therefore, the emperors in Constantinople were able to maintain their claim to supreme authority in the West. None of the barbarian rulers in the ex-imperial provinces paid much attention to the claim. But its existence may explain why any alternative source of supreme authority was so slow to develop, [
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Overall, therefore, the Empire’s strategy was more to absorb the barbarian challenge than to attempt any decisive solution. The problem was too large to be neatly solved. The emperors exacted tribute, both in money and in recognition, from the invaders. They settled them where possible in the lands they demanded, or acquiesced where necessary. They employed a whole gallery of barbarian generals—from Stilicho the Vandal to Odoacer of the Heruli—and recruited masses of barbarian soldiery, which steadily subverted political life in the Western provinces. In the end, it was largely immaterial whether the emperor gave his blessing to a puppet Caesar elected by barbarian troops or to a barbarian king. Yet
it is important to realize that the Roman Empire was not destroyed by the barbarian invasions. It reeled under the blows and suffered great losses, both in territory and influence. But it held together for almost a thousand years after 476, and it succeeded in reasserting itself on several notable occasions. To suggest otherwise is simply to succumb to Western prejudice, [
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the fourth century a form of uncials or ‘inch-high letters’ made their appearance in the writing of the late Roman Empire. They were generally smaller, rounder, and more suited to the requirements of pen than imperial forms had been. They long coexisted with the traditional Latin script which used ‘square’ and later ‘rustic’ capitals without punctuation or gaps between words. But it was the start of the long process of evolution of Latin writing which led from the uncial and half-uncial stage, through Caroline minuscule and Gothic to the humanistic miniscule and italic of the Renaissance period. [
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Palaeography, the study of ancient writing, is one of the auxiliary sciences vital to the historian’s and archivist’s craft. It often provides the only means for judging where, when, and by whom a document was written. Every period, every location, and every scribe reveal their own peculiarities.
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Greek, Cyrillic, and Arabic scripts passed through similar evolutions to those of Latin. All moved away from early formal styles to the cursive forms of later times. The records of the Ottoman chancelleries, written in an eccentric Turkish variant of Arabic, have the reputation of being unusually hard to decipher. (See Appendix III, p. 1227.)
Though the invention of printing, and later of typewriters, greatly facilitated the deciphering of documents, palaeography never became redundant. Many letters and diaries continued to be written by hand. In 1990 a team of German tricksters almost convinced the world that they had found the long-lost diaries of Adolf Hitler. The palaeographical skills of the forger exceeded those of the distinguished English professor who was hired to check his work.
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Justinian (r. 527–65) is mainly remembered for his codification of Roman law, and for a determined attempt to reassert imperial rule over the lost Western provinces. His legal reforms were certainly a lasting achievement; but from the standpoint of the Empire as a whole his preoccupations in the West must have seemed something of a diversion from more pressing matters. Justinian’s reign saw the Slavs appear on the Adriatic, and the Persians on the Mediterranean shore of the Levant. Constantinople was decimated by plague, and by the strife of the hippodrome factions, the Blues and the Greens. It was besieged by the Slavs in 540 and by the Avars in 562. Justinian caused an early scandal by marrying a so-called dancer called Theodora, the daughter of a Cypriot manager of the Greens. According to the
Secret History
attributed to Procopius, Theodora once regretted ‘that God had not endowed her with more orifices to give more pleasure to more people at the same time’. But she turned out to be an active and intelligent consort; it was a famous partnership. (See Appendix III, p. 1237.)
Justinian’s reconquest of the West centred on the exploits of his general, Belisarius, who set out on his first expedition to Africa in 533. His surprising success in destroying the Vandal kingdom at a stroke encouraged him to attack the Ostrogoths in Sicily and Italy. An isolated army of 7,500 men advanced on a realm which boasted 100,000 Germanic warriors. In 535 Belisarius took Palermo as reigning consul, and on 9 December 536 he entered Rome at the request of its frantic bishop. There, in 537–8, he withstood a mighty siege, where the walls of Aurelian held off the horde. At the critical moment, the defenders broke the heads of the Goths by hurling down the marble statues of gods and emperors ripped from Hadrian’s mausoleum. In 540 Belisarius took the Gothic capital of Ravenna. But thirteen years of war remained. Rome was subjected to two more punishing sieges. The occupation by Totila in 546 proved far more destructive than anything inflicted by Alaric or Genseric. The Gothic troops breached the walls, burned the gates, and deported the citizens. Most ominously, they smashed the arches of the aqueducts. ‘For forty days the imperial city was given up to the wolf and the owl.’
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Then fortunes were reversed once more. In 553 the campaign of Narses, an ageing eunuch of the Palace, completed what Belisarius had begun: Italy was restored as an imperial province with a governor at Ravenna; the Ostrogoths and their horde were dispersed. In 554, the imperialists attacked Spain, driving the Visigoths into the central plateau and re-establishing a Roman province in the south.
On the face of it, Justinian had restored the Empire to much of its former glory. The Mediterranean, once again, was a Roman lake. Yet the glory was superficial: ‘Reste une grandeur caduque, même malfaisante’ (the grandeur which remained was decrepit, even noxious).
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Italy in particular was so ruined by Justinian’s wars, so oppressed by his governors and tax-collectors, that the inhabitants soon
regretted the restoration. The Patriarch of Rome, resentful of interference in his ecclesiastical freedom, was driven to think of permanent separation. What is more, with the destruction of the Gothic horde, Italy had lost its defences. It fell an easy prey to the next wave of invaders—the Lombards. Apart from the lonely exarchate of Ravenna, the only parts to remain in imperial hands were in the south and in Sicily. Meanwhile all sorts of other enemies were looming on the horizon. In the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries Constantinople was repeatedly attacked. Huns, Ostrogoths, Avars, Slavs, Persians, and Arabs all made their bid for the ultimate prize. The Huns under Attila had ridden for the Bosporus on their outward journey. They reached the walls of Constantinople in 441. The Ostrogoths under Theodoric arrived after their victory at Adrianople. They reached the walls in 476.
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inscription on the Porta Rhegium records the reconstruction of the Land Walls of Constantinople in
AD
447. A recent earthquake had seriously damaged the third line of the city’s fortifications, which had been built by the Regent Artemius, thirty years earlier; and repairs and renovations were urgently required. The Huns were on the Danube frontier, and had already made one successful sortie to the Bosporus. As a result, a magnificent, multi-tiered system of defences was erected in the last years of Theodosius II, all the way from the Golden Gate to the Golden Horn. The main rampart of the Artemesian Wall was raised to a height of 100 feet above the surrounding countryside; a massive, battlemented protective wall was erected in front of it, providing a high terraced walkway; an outer esplanade guarded by a third line of battlements separated the walls from a broad, brick-lined moat. The whole was equipped with ninety-six major bastions, a host of lesser watch-towers, and a maze of traps, dams, sally-points, and false approaches. Though numerous extensions and alterations were made to the city’s defences at other more vulnerable points, it was the main Theodosian Walls, the great
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, which withstood the repeated attacks of the barbarians for more than a thousand years.
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(See Map 9.)
There is no scene more redolent of Christendom’s early centuries than this great fortress of the Christian empire, magnificently impregnable against the puny attempts of all attackers. The Visigoths came and went empty-handed in 378, the Huns in 441, the Ostrogoths in 476. The Slavs tried and failed in 540, the Persians in 609–10, 617–26, and again in 781, the Avars in 625. The Arabs laid unsuccessful siege in 673–8, and 717–18, the Bulgars in 813 and 913, the Rus in 865 and 904, the Pechenegs in 1087, and the Venetians in 1203. The Crusaders broke into Constantinople in April 1204 from the seaward side (see p. 360). But the Theodosian Walls remained intact until the Ottoman siege of 1453. Their fall was to mark not only the end of the Roman Empire but the beginning of modern military history. Gunpowder seriously modified the art of fortification. (See pp. 448–50).
To stand by the Golden Gate at sunset is one of the most moving of experiences for any historian. Originally built by Theodosius I as a threefold triumphal arch beyond the city, the
Porta áurea
was incorporated into the Walls in 417; but it continued to serve as the starting station of the imperial processional route. (It is now the
Yedi Kuleh
, the Fortress of the Seven Towers, at the entrance to Istanbul.) In the eyes of the defenders, the barbarians, like the last rays of the setting sun, always came from the West.